


you're my brother and i love you. that's it. no punchline.

by twoheadedcalf



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, [laura bailey vc] empire siblings bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 04:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18631210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheadedcalf/pseuds/twoheadedcalf
Summary: The only blood Beau and Caleb share is the one spilled in battle.or, Beau and Caleb and how important they are to each other.*day seven of beau week 2k19: found family.





	you're my brother and i love you. that's it. no punchline.

One day, Beau startles herself awake in an inn, after realizing she has lost one of the threads that tether her to Caleb. He’s an only child, obviously, as his Academy companions must have been too. She spent her life being an only daughter but that’s not true, not anymore, not for a while now.

She may have been basically disowned, she may not want anything to do with her family anymore but there’s a kid out there that shares her genes, shares her blood, as Fjord won’t let her forget.

(Beau tries not to prod the reason for that, knowing that the last time she did, she became the keeper of someone else’s worst secret, their burning shame, and their biggest regret. She doesn’t think she’d be able to do that for Fjord. She, very carefully, forbids her mind of pondering on the reasons for that, too.)

The only blood she and Caleb share is the one spilled in battle. She has appointed Caleb as her brother multiple times now, panicked in poorly planned con jobs. She’s always met with a doubtful stare. Even through squinting, the two of them look nothing alike. Caleb can tan surprisingly well (his mother’s side of the family, he’d said, free with the information but still cautious) but her skin is still darker than his. They both have brown eyes but they are different shapes. Both their hair and their noses are completely different.

Still, the words come to her quickly every time, so natural and so logical. She refuses to think hard about it.

(She never asked for siblings growing up, mostly because she never got what she asked from her parents, but also because she’d never wish the strange loneliness of living in the family estate to anyone. Beau doubts Caleb ever asked for one either, considering the humble poverty he lived in the Zemni Fields and how annoyed he gets whenever she asks for anything.

Still, the universe had presented them to each other.)     

*

Once, while walking through the market in some random town, something weird happened.

Caleb was looking at something shiny, trinkets for Nott, probably, while Beau busied herself a few stands down. And then, he’d said:

“Come here, little sister.”

Beau startled, badly, but she immediately went, her feet carrying her.

He only startled when she arrived, seeming to finally realize what had happened. They stared at each other, eyes wide, expression so similar.

They don’t talk about it.

*

One day, when Beau calls out ‘hey, bro!’, both Caleb and Fjord look up from where they’re sitting side by side. After a few moments, she says she doesn’t remember what she was going to say.

Fjord and Caleb look at each other, shrug, and go back to what they were doing. She doesn’t.

*

She realizes that, at one point, after so much time together, she started defending Caleb’s plans, however grouchily she did so, and he vouched for her _often_ (she’s too scared to say he vouches for her without fail but it's probably true).

Jester doesn’t seem surprised by this when Beau brings it up. _Of course_ Beau defends Caleb’s plans. _Of course_ Caleb vouches for Beau. Of course, Jester had said, like it was something obvious, and Beau wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel stupid or not. She’s too astonished to feel stupid, really.

*

Caleb starts sharing some of his books with her, unprompted. And not just his smut books, either. _Important_ books.

Somehow, someway, they feel just as important as Frumpkin. And, honestly, they kind of are.

(She remembers the early days when the only other person allowed to touch Frumpkin for longer than thirty seconds was Nott. The first time the cat had burrowed himself in her lap, no conditions to his company, no time limit to it, she’d stayed as still as a statue for several hours, afraid to scare him off.)

They still bore her (from the way Caleb smirks at her, he must know that they do) but she doesn’t dare treat them with anything other than respect and care (it may be reminiscent of how she handles Caleb himself).

Eventually, book searching becomes a Beau-and-Caleb thing and not just a Caleb thing.

*

When they start traveling to the coldest part of the continent, the north, the land Caleb belongs to, in a way, he lends her his scarf, even though she has winter clothes.

He bundles her up despite her protests, fusses over her like a worried mother and then pats and pinches her cheeks. She tries to slap his hands away but her movements have become slightly restricted.

She tells him the scarf reeks. He pats her head, their height difference somehow made more obvious by the gesture. He does not escape her punch this time.

Beau knows he dreads the north, knows he dreads who he was there, knows he dreads who-what he will find there so she indulges him and wears the thing every day. It’s warm. She’s warm.

Caleb doesn’t look happy (will he ever?) but he does look comforted.

*

Her first date with Jester practically becomes a party event, considering how Jester can’t keep a secret and Beau can’t hide her excitement after the cat’s out of the bag. Fjord is the one to make sure that their privacy is maintained.

Caleb is the one that handles Beau’s hair. He knocks the door to her room at the Lavish Chateau and offers to braid it. To make it special, he’d said. She accepts the offer.

The braids are nothing like any others Beau has seen before, not like Nott’s simple ones and not like Yasha’s elaborate plaited mess either. They are tight and pretty, nothing too overwhelming, nothing that will make her look unlike herself.

At one point, she asks if they are traditional Zemnian braids. She sees, through the mirror, Caleb shake his head. The silence that settles over them makes her skin itch and she stops herself from talking, sure that she should wait him out, like she often does.

He doesn’t sound tense or angry, just sad, when he says that this was how his mother used to wear her hair. She wasn’t Zemnian but her people, especially the women, wore their hair like this for special occasions. That’s all he says on the subject. She can’t tell if his eyes are watery or if it’s just the mirror image.

A week later, she asks him to teach her how to do it to herself. His smile is soft when he agrees.

*

Nott-Veth doesn’t wear wraps anymore. Neither does Caleb.

The wraps that Beau wears now belonged to him, once. She remembers that every time she redoes them. She doesn’t treat them with reverence or anything – they’re just simple cotton-soft wraps – but she doesn’t handle them recklessly.

Sometimes, Caleb will do them for her, not doing a poor job at it, though her own would’ve been tighter (it’s like he’s scared to hurt her). They hug often enough, leagues more relaxed than the first time, and he ruffles her hair, calls her little sister without second-guessing himself.

He accepts her punches like they are some sort of gift.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the last day of beau week and i just want to think the organizers for how they created and handled the event; it's been awesome!!! unfortunately, i only managed to prepare for two prompts but i'm still proud of what i wrote.
> 
> you can find me @detectivenott on twitter or @female-pain on tumblr!!


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